hit die (idea)

A hit die is in simplest terms a 'title' given to any die used in calculating damage in pen and paper, and some digitalRPGs that draw their roots from pen and paper. Its a little more complex in that its often used to mean "the hit die are" where you have a writtenstructure of rolls of die, written as:

In the above example since your rolling four 20 sided die you can't achieve less than 4, and can achieve as much as 80, and the odds of achieving 4 or 80 are 20^4th ( 1 in 160k ) instead of with one 80 sided die 1 in 80, whereas mid range numbers grow much more probable with multiple die.